Haiti Intervention: Africans Must Stop Kenya’s William Ruto

In his September 2021 resignation letter, the then US Special Envoy to Haiti, Mr. Daniel Foote, essentially placed blame for the Haiti crisis on his own country. However, it was in the concluding paragraph that he stated the context within which William Ruto’s role in the Planned Haiti Intervention on behalf of the US can be understood: International Puppeteering.

“What the people of Haiti need and want is the opportunity to chart their own course without international puppeteering,” Mr. Foote wrote, alluding to his country’s interference in Haiti’s internal affairs. However, even he, writing in September 2021, a year before the disputed Kenyan elections, could not have foreseen that his government was propping up a black-faced puppet from a country across the Atlantic Ocean, 12,000 km away, to intervene in its stead.

Two years later, that puppet is set to lead the Haiti Intervention, to do the dirty job that Biden cannot undertake at the moment because body bags of US soldiers returning in an election period will not be good for his 2024 reelection bid. This comes after Canada and other countries declined the same offer. So, what convinced Ruto? What could possibly be his excuse for readily offering his country, even to the extent of ignoring condemnations of groups like the Black Alliance for Peace and warnings from international Pan-African organizations like the Frantz Fanon Foundation against Kenya and African countries being instrumentalized for imperial interests?

Is it that he is sending Kenyans to defend democracy? No. The current unpopular Prime Minister of Haiti, Mr. Ariel Henry, wasn’t elected by the people of Haiti. He was appointed and forced upon Haiti by the US. Is it to restore law, and order, and enforce justice? No. The same Mr. Ariel, the current Prime Minister of Haiti, is a credible suspect in the assassination of his predecessor in 2021, and the US has so far helped shelve the investigation. Is it to defend Kenyan interests? What interests? Haiti is over 12,000 km away from Kenya, separated by the vast Atlantic Ocean. Most Kenyans can’t even locate Haiti on a map.

So, if Kenya has nothing to gain as a country, have Keyan citizens considered the repercussions? Have they asked themselves why Canada and other countries refused to lead this Haiti Intervention, despite pressure from the US? Have they considered why Biden’s US which is only a stone throw away from Haiti, is not sending its own soldiers but bribing their president to send Kenyans? Have they tasked Ruto with explaining the true objective of this invasion? Have they taken the time, as did citizens of other countries, to reflect on the disastrous consequences of this puppet venture? Simply put, have Kenyans demanded an explanation from their president?

If they have, Ruto’s response yesterday was nothing short of an insult.

Instead of providing Kenyans any explanation, even if it were fabricated, as he often does, Ruto sent Mutua, his Cabinet Secretary who speaks as if he has a hot potato stuck in his mouth, to simply tell his citizens that invading Haiti is “doing God’s will.” What demon is driving these lunatics? Why didn’t Mutua also add that his boss worships some senile 80-year-old god of money who lives in Washington? Why didn’t he tell them that it is that god who has demanded the sacrifice of Kenyan blood in this Haiti Intervention, in exchange for a $100 million loot for Ruto and his henchmen to share?

Is this how low Ruto and his zealots think of their citizens? That they can dismiss concerns about sending Kenyans to die for another country by simply claiming they are ‘doing God’s work’?  Not that we care how foolish Ruto thinks Kenyans are. But with him elevating his masquerade to the detriment of all of Africa by colluding with the US to invade Haiti, a nation of black people that stood with Africa during our liberation struggles, we must call him out.

So now, we too, across Africa, must ask ourselves questions similar to what we hoped Kenyans would ask, only this time, we must ask them as Africans and as black people. Indeed, the people of Haiti are begging us to do so, and in arriving at the obvious answers, act quickly to stop Ruto. Last month, Haitians wrote an open letter to us, Africans, expressing their displeasure with Kenya’s planned Haiti Intervention, and beseeching us to stand with them in solidarity. In this very emotive letter, one plea stands out:

No country from the land of our ancestors should serve as the sounding board or weapon of the old colonial and slaveholding powers, who have transformed into imperialists and now are actively engaged in a criminal project of destabilizing Haiti, of systematically sabotaging the country’s sovereignty and to which a UN-US occupation would constitute a dangerous stage

Excerpt from the open Letter

The same thing they requested no country from Africa, “the land of our ancestors” to be, namely, a “sounding board or weapon” of imperialists, is what Ruto has decided Kenya will become. Will the rest of Africans heed this Haitian plea not to let any African country be instrumentalized for imperial interests?

We must. Africans in the Horn of Africa cannot turn away from this crisis. Ethiopians cannot ignore the call from Haiti. Prime Minister Abiy cannot afford to look the other way. Haiti stood with Ethiopia in 1905. President Alexi of Haiti helped King Menelik II buy cannons from Russia to protect Ethiopia’s territorial integrity, defeat the Italian army in the Battle of Adwa, and remain independent. Ethiopians must stand with Haitians in the struggle to defend their own independence today. Prime Minister Abiy must call out his Kenyan counterpart.

Further south, Africans cannot ignore this call for solidarity from Haiti. South Africa’s Julius Malema cannot look away from the damaging precedent William Ruto is setting in the name of Pan-Africanism. After all, the EFF statement congratulating Ruto played a significant role in validating Ruto’s contested election. Malema’s own statement later, no doubt, warranted at the time, legitimized Ruto’s presidency outside Kenya and gave him the pan-African skateboard that he is now using to masquerade.  Malema should call out Ruto in the same breath.

To the west, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso cannot pretend they don’t see the dangers of Ruto’s puppetry. As it stands, Ruto’s Western masters are creating the conditions for a potential intervention in West Africa, as they resist the region’s decoupling from their influence. What right will the region have to oppose such intervention if its silence in the face of the Haitian plea, allows Ruto to proceed? What right will the citizens there have to expect solidarity from others if today, they fold their hands, thinking this is not their fight?

In East Africa, we cannot pretend that Ruto is not tarnishing the good name of our region. Shall the region be hosting the AFCON next year, while at the same time, Kenyans are killing Haitians? Simply put, if timid Kenyans wish to wait like hypnotized rabbits until their puppet president destroys their country, that’s on them. But Africans cannot afford to sit back. It’s time to act, to rein in on Ruto. We must make it abundantly clear to Ruto that his planned Haiti Intervention contradicts the collective aspirations of the African people, and that we won’t let his duplicity, hypocrisy, and puppetry proceed under the banner of Pan-Africanism.